“I just want to be perfect,” says Karen Carpenter in the recording studio, played by a Barbie doll fashioned by director Todd Haynes in, what I would argue, is still his best film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Thanks to Haynes’s deranged casting choice, Barbie is a flawless proxy for Karen Carpenter, the wholesome clear-voiced … Continue reading
Are you sick to death of sleek cinema? An overbearing aesthetic that has trickled down so far that even the most whacko experimental films and unhinged underground movies strive to achieve a similar spotless surface perfection as those boring big-budget Hollywood films? Blech! Give me the awkward, the uncanny, the janky, the shonky, the half-baked, … Continue reading
Where have all the cowboys gone? I’ll wait for you to finish belting the rest of that song. It’s hard to resist Paula Cole’s 1990s classic, but if we suppress the urge to run to Sing Sing to furiously (and drunkenly) yodel, “Where is my John Wayne?” we can take her question seriously. I mean, … Continue reading
“Watch the wire.” That’s what I was warned as I maneuvered my way around marble-topped tables and White House gewgaws at the new 45 Wine & Whiskey Bar, a Trump-themed Trump bar at Trump Tower on a recent Friday night, trying to reach two plush high-backed dusty magenta chairs that wouldn’t look out of place … Continue reading
Is there anything that can prepare you to watch a visibly pregnant woman vomit, clutch her belly, and reach into her pants to draw back fingers full of dark, black motor oil? Continue reading
Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams gobblers! What’s that? You’re excited for the second annual pandemic Thanksgiving?! Well, who isn’t, my little stuffed turklets! When Filthy Dreams was originally conceived as a camp twist on the idea of Nietzsche’s eternal return—a show happening on the hour every hour—a decade ago, we never quite realized how … Continue reading
In the latter half of the year of our Lord—or really Lady—2021, I decided to become a Princess Diana obsessive. That’s right, send me all your purple Princess Diana Beanie Babies that you’ve been squirreling away under your beds since the late 1990s just in case they finally become worth more than NFTs. I’m now … Continue reading
A nuclear green alien robot baby with his daddy’s matching lime-green hair. A morph suit dress that resembles a cross between the eponymous character from Alien and Charlie’s Green Man from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. A Balenciaga sleeping bag that could be mistaken for Mugatu’s Derelicte line from Zoolander. The blanket from Roseanne‘s sofa. … Continue reading
An ill-fated trip to America’s heart of darkness–Florida–that becomes a whirlwind of sex work and crime. A doomed friendship forged over stripping and text messages. A montage of the most repulsive dicks you can imagine. It’s no question that Zola, the cinematic adaptation of A’Ziah “Zola” King’s jaw-dropping and riveting 148-tweet Twitter magnum opus directed by … Continue reading
Who could have predicted that all it would take to break the recent conservative stranglehold on camp and transgression would be a simple ride to Hell on a stripper pole in thigh-high boots and powerbottoming Satan? Certainly not me. But that’s what our Lord and Savior Lil Nas X achieved with the music video for … Continue reading